About the select attribute in apply-templates

I have a question about how to use the select attribute in apply-templates. When I write this: <ul>&l开发者_StackOverflow社区t;xsl:apply-templates select="authors/author" /></ul>, what does it mean? Does it mean that it should apply a template where the author nodes are children of the authors node which is a child of the current node?

Following template rule:

<xsl:template match="author">  
    <li><xsl:value-of select="."/></li>
</xsl:template>

Does it mean that it should apply a template where the author nodes are children of the authors node which is a child of the current node?

Exactly.

Well, even more exatcly: It means the XSLT processor should apply templates to all <author> nodes who are children of all <authors> nodes who are children of the current node.

If there are mutliple templates that can match an <author>, the XSLT processor will decide which template to apply. For example:

<xsl:template match="author[not(@country = 'USA')]">
  <!-- will execute for any non-U.S. authors, specifically -->
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="author">
  <!-- will execute for all other authors -->
</xsl:template>